


will i see you on the other side?

by euphemea



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dreams and Nightmares, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:41:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23045710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/euphemea/pseuds/euphemea
Summary: Sylvain is sixteen: young enough to get away with cheeky winks at older women, young enough to still believe in his brother, young enough to hope that he’ll one day fall in love and live a happily-ever-after.Sylvain is sixteen: old enough to know that the goddess will bless him with the vision of his pair, old enough to resent that he has no say in the matter, old enough to accept that ordained love is nothing next to the will of society.Sylvain is sixteen, and he doesn’t yet know that fate has found him.~~Sylvain Week Day 4: Memory
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 12
Kudos: 195
Collections: Sylvain Week 2020!





	will i see you on the other side?

**Author's Note:**

> this is a rework of something i did for sylvix week! i've wanted to polish it up and repost it for a while, so i hope you enjoy this silly thing. this was supposed to be completed for sylvain week day 4 (memory) but uh... it's late, whoops.

The first time Sylvain dreams of his soulmate, all he remembers is dark hair and the unnerving sensation of being pierced. His ascent back to wakefulness is abrupt, like being thrown unceremoniously from a cliff with no tether to pray to, and he blinks into sudden consciousness, the remnants of his dream silvery and ephemeral as they rapidly flitter away. All that’s left are the muddy dregs of a face and a vague sense of longing.

Sylvain is sixteen: young enough to get away with cheeky winks at older women, young enough to still believe in his brother, young enough to hope that he’ll one day fall in love and live a happily-ever-after. 

Sylvain is sixteen: old enough to know that the goddess will bless him with the vision of his pair, old enough to resent that he has no say in the matter, old enough to accept that ordained love is nothing next to the will of society.

Sylvain is sixteen, and he doesn’t yet know that fate has found him.

But when he sees dark hair and sharp amber eyes once more, nearly a month to the day of the first dream, he can feel the truth reverberating to his bones. Warming him. Scalding him even as death freezes him. 

He dreams of ruthless rain, of an eerie thrum of power spidering its way through his hand, of a quiet, world-weary voice telling him, _“Sorry, Sylvain. You’ll die first.”_

A gleam of steel. Pain. Then nothing.

The silent, empty maw of reality leers back at him, and the memory doesn’t slip away, doesn’t pull like quicksand below his floundering feet, and Sylvain is left with lingering dread. 

Some soulmate. Some fate. 

Sylvain sits up in bed and laughs quietly. Bitterly. Uncontrollably. The goddess mocks him, and her jeering doesn’t mean a single thing.

When he rises, he does not have to look in the mirror to know that his smile is cracked. Repairing it won’t be easy, but it comes back a little stronger and more perfect every time. 

* * *

Sylvain will never spend his life with his soulmate. They are not doting, not delicate, not docile. They can never be the match society dreams _for_ him; this gossamer love will never be ideal in the world’s hawkish eyes.

Sylvain’s _duty_ is first to his family. It is his right and role to carry on the family’s name and fortune, siring an heir to push forth the ever-turning cycle of Gautier. It is his place to birth another generation palely imitating his own. Beloved scion to a corporate legacy he never wanted, never asked for, the favored younger child only because his brother had never been quite pliable enough to mold into their father’s stern image—Sylvain knows who he is. He cannot fall to jealousy and petty hatred the way Miklan ultimately did, nor can he strike away the shackles of expectation to take a chance on infinite happiness. 

The world pities those who never meet their soulmates: it bemoans the woes of poor lost souls whose fates never quite aligned correctly; it extolls the righteousness of those who follow the goddess’s guidance. The imprint of destiny is invisible—achingly and indelibly burned into hearts and minds, chased in waking hours—and only two halves may know the truth of the whole. 

But far more pressing than the will of a higher being is the will of greed and its desire to covet wealth already clenched in its cruel paw. Dictated from above, love is by far the tallest tale of them all. Sylvain’s has two masters, and neither of them is his heart.

Sylvain knows he must never fall in love, least of all with his soulmate.

* * *

The goddess’s scorn persists and Sylvain’s dreams remain dogged; the taunting nightmares lay him low with unrelenting force until the ache of loneliness pervades even his waking hours. 

When Sylvain’s lucky, he dreams of his soulmate daily ( _Felix, a perfect word of limitless meaning that he finally learns not long before his eighteenth birthday, swept in with a run of dreams that leaves him weeping for a shared childhood and infinitely stretching years of camaraderie_ ), every day an endless refrain of two melodic syllables tumbling inside his head. Or maybe when he’s cursed—his soulmate’s name the last latch on the series of locks that shutter away the goddess’s blessing from the path he will inevitably walk. 

_Felix. Felix. Felix._

The harmony to Sylvain’s every step.

Endless, ravaged fields ( _Tailtean Plains, awash with war and drowning in the blood of countless soldiers once more; Gronder Field, burning with nostalgia and ringing with the cries of friend fighting friend_ ) form the backdrops to visceral memory, and they leave behind a bone-deep anguish wrought by jumbled lifetimes spent together and apart. 

Maybe: Sylvain falls and fades as rain and earth meet him, trailing sorrow in his downward arc, again and again and again, as those first fateful words ring out their refrain above him. 

Or: Sylvain’s the one left standing, the bone-bright Lance of Ruin shuddering in his hand as his tears wash into a bottomless emptiness at odds with the cloudless blue above.

Or, better: a younger self guides Felix through youth, their peals of laughter bright, and Sylvain finds himself reminiscing of imagined, quiet afternoons spent dozing together in secluded glens.

There are countless dreams carved in sharp relief against the halls of a church ( _Garreg Mach Monastery, year 1180, then again for the millennium festival_ ). Cruel barbs taunted in dusty training grounds. Teasing, flirting banter echoing through classrooms. Companionable silence as they relish better food than they had ever known. Whispered words at the top of a tower, only the moon as their witness.

Black and white uniforms with gold trim. A sword strapped to the side. Blue, red, yellow banners. 

There are patterns. Side by side, adorned in blue. Dissimilar colors, skirting through cold halls, unable to reconcile what the other has abandoned ( _Faerghus, their friends_ ). Red or yellow together, marooned amidst a sea of unfamiliar faces.

And then, all at once, the drip of dreams comes to a halt. For four months, Sylvain does not see Felix’s face, and the hope beginning to bloom quickly shrivels to nothing. Fear springs in its place.

 _Gone_. Chance missed, Felix sent to the eternal ever after. The threat that Sylvain has become a cursed soul, wept for by the unknowing masses, the goddess’s blessing revoked just as easily as it was given. Sylvain waits and waits for Felix, terrified of another night’s creeping dread.

When he finally dreams again, he wakes to desperate promises, to solemn oaths, to unending pledges to be united in death. The lingering taste of tentative first kisses bleeds into frenzied passion, hidden by the night, and Sylvain trembles with the weight of it emanating from his core. 

_“Do you remember our promise, Felix?”_

He echoes the words to darkened silence and wishes he could fall back into dreams.

One vision stands alone, repeated and repeated until is as much truth as it is unreality: Sylvain and Felix stand together with a third man ( _friend, boar, majesty, Dimitri_ ) and a woman ( _companion, knight, sister, Ingrid_ ) overlooking a brighter future, more familiar faces dancing at the edges of recognition, together guided by a kind, quiet hand ( _Professor, Byleth, Archbishop_ ). They grow old together in a land that remembers them for their righteousness.

An embarrassed flush and spindly fingers held between his herald in Sylvain’s future, and he wakes to cold, empty palms grasping at a miracle.

* * *

The questions arrive on his eighteenth birthday, a perfunctory recognition of the goddess’s will before it’s overridden by the greater one of his family’s greed. 

_Have you dreamt? Have you met her?_

Sylvain laughs, smiles, shrugs haplessly. The truth is ashen on his tongue, and he swallows the words away. There is no point to speaking it aloud, no use setting it free only to be brutally slaughtered. He keeps Felix close to his heart, lets Felix’s memory grow within his soul, fuels their impossibility with feverish desire. He counts down the days to when the heel of expectation will burn him to ash.

The girls offered up to his family, bait to build bonds and share wealth—

They’re pretty, some of them, with eyes round and naive and artfully blameless. Easily charmed, easily bought, easily dazzled by a guileless facade; never sharp, never deep, never willing to challenge Sylvain’s brazen leering. They’re such fragile toys, dancing in place within their glass music boxes, dull tools for the machinations of gilded hands pulling puppet strings; Sylvain wonders if their dreams are as empty as they are.

He’s placed along the first steps of his path, welcomed with wide arms and wider pockets as he’s set loose on Garreg Mach University ( _University? No._ ), free from living under his parents’ thumb but given new watchers, new scrutinizers, new vultures circling to carve him down to the last scrap of self. The parade of potential wives is unending, and for each one turned away, two are summoned in her place. 

Sylvain’s mask is flawless; it slips on effortlessly every morning and is rent away every night. The dreams to tear down his veneer are raucous and vibrant. Every night brings a new soul-shattering revelation. 

Felix, tear-struck and sweet. Felix, uniformed and prickly. Felix, battle-scarred and constant. Felix, always snarky but warm, blanketed by friendship and thawing day by day. 

Felix, sword drawn and face set, a grim relief against the blazing plains of Gronder behind him. Felix, alone on a battlefield, red as his banner and red as his enemies’ blood. Felix, broken and battered and breathing no longer, shattered under Arianrhod’s brilliant sky. 

Felix, held tight in his arms, lips biting and perfect against Sylvain’s own, their victory at Enbarr ringing endlessly around them.

* * *

At twenty-two, Sylvain can feel the walls closing in. The lesson at sixteen, at eighteen, learned every single day—

He wants to defy it. 

His dreams have trailed him for six years. The goddess has convinced him: he has to find Felix. He _must_ , before it’s all too late, before his strength runs dry and his dreams are nothing more than the ghosts of haunting ashes set to murmur sadly over his shoulder into infinity.

(He hopes it’s not just him. Sylvain’s blood freezes to think he could be the only one who cares.)

The days fragment and collapse, a blur of reality and dream and wish, running together into jagged whirlpools pulling him toward a fate ordained by a hand other than the goddess’s—

All at once, the tide collapses.

Sylvain reaches listlessly—idly, pointlessly—for his coffee, tiredly turning over the nuisance of content his droll capstone business class decrees will turn riches, just another day to be run over by the wheel of fate: hoping for a chance to rise, ready to be ground into dust. 

An irritated voice cuts through. “It’s you.”

Cold rushes down Sylvain’s spine. He knows that voice. It makes his heart beat in an achingly familiar timbre. 

“Felix,” Sylvain says, and he breathes for the first time, rising above the water of memory to embrace the sun. There’s a rush that comes with truth, and it threatens to bring him to his knees. He exhales it in a choked sob, letting the weight of fate rise from his shoulders. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

Felix glances away, staring at a spot over his shoulder. “Take the coffee, dumbass.” A sweet flush tinges his cheeks, familiar yet not, and Sylvain wants to memorize it anew.

Sylvain moves the coffee out of the way; he doesn’t need to wake up again, now that life and love have merged. Gently, carefully, with emotion spilling over, he takes Felix’s hands in his, entranced and delighted by the answering luminescent blush. “I… I’m so glad I found you.”

_I’m so glad I didn’t lose you._

“You can’t get rid of me that easily.” Felix says, and he gives Sylvain a wry grin. “You’re so impatient. Incorrigible. Insatiable.”

Sylvain bursts out laughing and finds that he can’t stop.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! find me on twitter [@euphemeas](https://twitter.com/euphemeas)!


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